By “object” above I was referring to the activity in the “output layer”. Numenta’s view is that object representations exist in all hierarchical levels.
Of course the highly abstract concepts are still going to be higher in the hierarchy as you would expect. But HTM proposes that even the very lowest levels are capable of doing a lot more than traditionally thought.
BTW, for reference (I just realized my previous post lacked context), I was referring to the process of “reseting the output layer when switching to a new object” from the Columns Paper. The circuit described in that video (or something similar to it) seems like a good candidate for triggering a “reset”.